Joanne Tarlin

Frustrated, angry, and sad about events in a world that seems to be growing out of control, inspires me to invent my own worlds in abstract and semi-abstract landscape paintings. Like El Greco, Goya, and Turner, I use line, gesture, composition and atmosphere to create moods, exhibit movement and emotions, tense, wild, and passionate, to reflect my thoughts. Each of my collections began as a germ of an idea. What if I could show the beauty of the world juxtaposed the ill winds that blow across it? How could I remember my mom by including her favorite color, pink, in works that exhibit her bold and vivacious personality and proud spirit? What does freedom look like? Oppression? What could I paint that would express my dad’s thoughtfulness, quietness, and desire for acceptance? As a child, I spent a lot of time wandering the woods, tromping through brambles and across streams around my home in Massachusetts. Now, I walk through forests that meet the sea in Maine. I watch the seabirds and sea swells, and the expansive sky. As the barometer dips and rises, clouds, winds, and fog scud by, whip up the waves and cloak my world in mystery. My memories of my observations fill my mind with images that grow and ultimately bloom on my canvases. Using plants and flowers, real and imagined, and viewing them from varied perspectives, I use them in place of people. I aim to infuse them with anthropomorphic actions like stretching, cowering, and bending backwards. In this way, I compose vignettes of lands divided, storming skies, birds over tidal flats, crashing waves, dark clouds over blooming flowers and so on to present my ideas.